


One More Reason

by Ephemeral_Love (orphan_account)



Series: Black, Tight, Leather Suits [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Catlad, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-08 15:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7764091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Ephemeral_Love
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's never helped a kid before, not like this, but she just has a pull in her heart that tells her she has to do it, has to save him before he falls deeper into the mentality of Gotham's hopelessness, of its destruction and its disease.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Reason

"You know, I've been thinking," Bruce starts one night, and Selina is balancing the phone on her shoulder, trying to hold her bowl with one hand and finding some salt with the other, "of taking Richard in."

"Taking him in?" She asks, with an almost mock disbelief and catches a glimps of the salt on the table, walks toward it and sees it resting on Ivy's magazines, folded so it was open to a page where Bruce was on the front, rolls her eyes because she already knows what Ivy thinks of Bruce. "That doesn't seem like you."

She hears the scoff on the other side of the line, wonders if Bruce has been thinking about it since the night of the circus, and he says, "People change." There's a _snap_ and he grunts, deep and low, almost painfully and she asks if he's okay, says that he's fine. "I just-- I talk about kids with similar experiences to mine, talk about helping them. Maybe it's about time I actually did something."

"He was put in the juvi, Bruce," Selina says. "It may have been the work of a racist bastard, but by the time you get to him, he'll already have been eaten alive."

He sighs and she sits down at the table, flips through the magazine and adds the salt, takes the phone in her hand and puts the first spoonful in her mouth. He says, "I know," and then stops, and she doesn't have anything to say so she doesn't, then he adds, "It's all the more reason to save him."

*

Within minutes Selina finds herself in her other high-heeled, tight black outfit running across rooftops and wondering what she was doing without actually stopping to think about it. She's known the streets since she was a kid, known the alleys like they were her home, because when she was small, they  _were_. The first time she ran over them instead of through them she had gotten lost, because the angle had been off and everything looked so different from the rooftops, but now she recognizes all the streets, right side up, twisted and upside down.

She also happens to recognize the tall, dark and broody down in one of the many alleyways that she had huddled in as a child for warmth, and she crouches, watches him fight a dozen or so thugs with ease. She laughs at the ears, because for such a dark figure they  _were_ kind of ridiculous, and then continues on, because she knows that she's on the wrong side of the law to have a conversation with the Bat, knows that she's lucky she hasn't had one yet.

She reaches the Juvenile Center sooner then she thinks she would, being lost in her own thoughts, and she struggles to remember the ways she used as a child to get in and out. Some of the ways she was too big for, she knew, some had already been repaired, but there was one way she remembers, one that was through a hand-dug tunnel that lead straight to a hallway. She remembers that no one was sure where the heck the tunnel came from, but no one was going to tell.

She runs around to the back of the building, on the inside of the fence (and she mentally laughs at it, because it was too easy to get in, almost like they weren't trying, she doesn't think about the fact that they probably weren't) until she reaches a bush, overgrown like everything else on the grounds and has to slice some of the branches away to fit. The small hole right beside the trunk is bigger than she remembers it being, but she still doesn't know if it's big enough. She tries anyway.

The only way she manages to fit is on her stomach, knees straight behind her and arms extended forward, her cheek dragging against the dirt bottom. She wonders why she didn't go in any of the easier ways, like waltzing through the front door and taking the guards head-on (They were mostly overweight and drunks anyway) and then remembers that the kid was probably in shock, abused, and the last thing he needs was a woman in black taking him with a flurry of confusion and alarms and curses.

Selina doesn't want to take him, she wants him to come with her. If that makes any sense.

Eventually, with the speed of a snail, her fingertips hit a wall of dirt, and she realizes that it leads straight up a couple of feet towards the exit. She has to bend her back awkwardly and her head brushes the smooth back side of a tile, but It's slightly more roomy and she can move her arms if she squeezes enough. She lifts the tile high enough so that her eyes can see the hallway and check for any people, and she doesn't see feet, so she strains and grabs her whip, pushes off the tile and flicks the long thong at the camera as quickly as she can, hears the satisfying  _crack_ of the popper as it hits its destination.

She pushes herself up, knows that if things haven't changed, it'll be a while before one of the guards notice the camera is down. The building still smells like a hospital, Selina remembers the rumors flying that it used to be one, before they redid it to hold children instead of the sick, and she walks down the hallways, whipping the cameras as she goes, looking at the closed and locked doors, looking for the name  _Grayson_. 

The lights are dim but she recognizes the name immediately, sees a colored picture taped to the front of the door and wonders how the kitten convinced the guards to let him do that, and she crouches down to pick the lock.

It doesn't take long, and she pushes the door inward, lets the little light from the hallway seep into his windowless room. She sees the small figure on the bed and laughs because she never remembers actually going to sleep when it was lights out, and she gently shakes him awake.

He's cute when he wakes up, actually lets out a little mewl as he rubs his eyes and sits up, and Selina can't help the bittersweet smile that touches her lips, because she knows there would have been no way some of the guards held back their temptations with an innocent child like him. 

His big eyes lock on her goggles, but he doesn't say anything, just watches her, and she whispers, "Hi."

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed to reveal his pajamas, and he sighs, "I don't want to do this," but his hand reaches the collar of his shirt to undo the first button anyway, his eyes watering.

Selina reaches her hand and stops his, pushes it back onto the bed and says, "I don't want that either." She stands him up, knows what he must be thinking, but says, "I want to take you away from here, Dick."

Suspicion immediately clouds his eyes and he takes a step back, questions, "Why?" and Selina can feel her heart crack at the thought that he's already thinking like a Gothamite.

"My name," She says, "It's Selina." She doesn't answer his question, comes to realization that she doesn't know  _how_ , because she's never helped a kid before, not like this, but she just has a pull in her heart that tells her she has to do it, has to save him before he falls deeper into the mentality of Gotham's hopelessness, of its destruction and its disease. 

She ends up taking too long to continue talking, isn't sure how long she would have taken if the alarm hadn't started ringing, and she grabs his hand and runs, realizes that he quietly follows and wonders how much emotion he's let himself feel for the past couple of weeks, because god knows that she knows it's easier to shut down. She has to take down a dozen or so of the drunks before she reaches the tile, shoves it aside and he jumps in without being asked, her following right after. 

The tile is closed on top of her and she's sitting, her legs in the flat part of the tunnel and her torso straight up, and she realizes she's going to have to awkwardly scoot on her  _back_ now. She can hear people's footsteps frantically moving above her, and by her feet she can feel Dick starting to move. She's surprised by how heavily she's breathing, knows that it's more because she had been worried for _Dick_  than because it was hard, and she follows him. It doesn't take long for them to get over the fence once they reach it, although it is harder, both because of the alarms and the kitten, but once they make it over, they're free to run.

Halfway to her apartment he gets tired and she carries him on her back, finds out it's not a good idea to do a flip with a sleeping child clinging to you, and then makes it to her unlocked window and slides it open, drops inside and lays him on the couch. She hears a crinkle and sees a crumpled piece of paper in his fist, wonders when he had the time to grab it and gently pries it from his fingers, smooths it out to look at it. It takes her a while to realize it's his family, all flying through the air in a poor imitation of the Grayson poster she had seen on the outside of the big tent, and she smiles sweetly and hangs it up on the fridge next to Harley's evil looking Joker, and then curls up on the foot of the couch to fall asleep next to her kitten.


End file.
